


Sweetest in the Gale

by unwinding_fantasy



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - War, Best Friends, Drama, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hope, Hope vs. Despair, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Waiting, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 13:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17898929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwinding_fantasy/pseuds/unwinding_fantasy
Summary: The bombs fall around them. Axel and Roxas wait.





	Sweetest in the Gale

**Author's Note:**

> I watched Dunkirk last night. This thing happened. Can be viewed as romance or friendship, whatever you like.

It was oh-six-hundred hours when Axel came to, spitting sand and salt water and god knew what else. He knew because he’d made a point of it to watch dawn slink in every single day since they’d deployed him. “Just think of it as an all-expenses paid holiday. Free food, clothes, booze. Pull out a guy’s tooth, call it a souvenir. Just 'cuz the locals wanna murder you doesn’t mean you can’t get your million dollar sunrises.” Most of his company had laughed. His pint-sized bunk-mate though had flipped him the bird, unappreciative of Axel’s sincere attempt at lightening the nervy aura that had descended like acrid fallout ever since they got their marching orders.

Like much of Axel’s life, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now though, staring with abject horror at the debris and men strewn across the red-tinged beach like so many toys, Axel was having second (third? hundredth?) thoughts. He'd spent a lot of time bantering and chatting with his company, then a lot more conversing with God. After a couple weeks of running for his life though Axel found himself praying there was no god because that was preferable to a scenario where some divine deity got its jollies by dumping its creations in the middle of nowhere and watched them slaughter each other over a scrap of land. God, if it did exist, could go suck a fat one, he thought as he squinted across the ocean, saw smoke pillowing in the distance like some giant had torn asunder the juncture of sky and sea. He pressed the grimy heels of his palms into his eyes, drew in a shuddering breath that sounded too much like machine gun fire. One of those ships had been taking him back home before… before...

Tiny black specks began emerging from the rip in the horizon. Fighters, more of them. Ten minutes and the beach was gonna go boom, and that twisted wreckage past the breakers was the nearest thing to a boat in this god-forsaken corner of the coast. He could go inland and hide in the dugouts. Lay low, play dead. Hell, if he was captured, maybe he could trade his soaked cigs for a chance at the enemy letting him slip through their lines.

Useless. He dropped his arms, let them dangle, fear gripping his throat like a vice. Useless, but here was no better, the evacuation plan sinking under the might of the Foe’s missiles. The low thrum of jet engines cut into Axel’s ears and he would’ve pissed himself then if he hadn’t already. Those dumbasses queuing on the mole were either desperate or past the point of caring. Didn’t matter. They were gonna be obliterated soon, all of them.

A fighter swooped. Gunfire pelted down.

Axel ran.

An automatic response, he figured, all burning lungs and aching calves, sand sucking and sucking him down. Sludge seeped between his toes. His boots, where the hell were his boots? He might’ve remembered if it wasn’t for the assault lurking behind every blink: Saix’s face, ripped apart by mortar-flung shrapnel; Xigbar’s eye, pierced by a bayonet and weeping blood, shark’s smile frozen on his mouth. An endless supply of wisecracks he’d been all throughout their infantry training, happily tossing grenade after grenade, pulling the pins with his teeth like a goddamn action movie hero. “It’s just a front,” Axel’s definitely underage friend had insisted, quietly seething on their top bunk. “Bet he’s the first to drop everything and bolt.” A complete mystery, how anyone could believe the kid was old enough for military service. Maybe he was blowing officers behind the mess or something. Axel had rolled over, feeling like his soul was being pierced, unable to meet those defiant, guileless eyes. 

The kid had been wrong though. The first person to flee had been some gangly guy with dirty blonde hair and nervous eyes, a bullet to the brain for his cowardice. The lance corporal who’d fired the shot screamed at them to keep advancing unless they wanted their own grey matter smearing the poop deck. Demyx had probably saved Axel’s life that day.

Boots, where were his fucking boots? A cluster of bodies stacked for burial sat halfway between the dunes and the sea. He fell to his knees, yanking the first pair of legs his shaky hands landed on.

An animalistic scream. Limbs flailed. A heavy combat boot connected with Axel’s chin. He toppled backwards, starbursts swimming in his vision.

“Get the hell off me!” someone yelled.

Axel jolted like he’d been hit. That tooth-and-nail tenor… In Axel’s mind, the bloody images were shattered by a slow smile and periwinkle eyes. Something suspiciously like hope bloomed in the spot behind Axel’s ribcage. “Roxas? Roxas, is that really you?”

The corpse mound shuddered. A filth-crusted soldier emerged from the hellish depths. “Axel?”

“In the flesh.” For the first time in forever, he didn’t have to feign the grin.

“Thought they’d got you, that--”

Axel cut him off, scanning the skies for more strafers. “Yeah, well, I don’t kill so easy.” Roxas, his bratty little bunk-mate, the kid who’d diligently penned letters to his mother every Sunday. Axel had been certain Roxas had gotten wiped with the rest of their company; he’d cried about it for days. Grief, an inconvenient process messing up clear shots since the instant Roxas died. Didn’t die. The bottom of Pandora’s box had blue eyes. “Let’s get the hell out of this shithole. If we can make the dugouts, we can wait for the next evac team.”

“They’re sending another? Who told you?”

“Nobody told me. I overheard the brass. They’re sending cruisers, a couple destroyers.” Lie after lie rolled off his tongue but it was worth it to see Roxas’ eyes light up, perfect blue. “C’mon, we gotta move.”

“Can’t. My leg’s busted.”

“Ah.” That explained the earlier tantrum. The growl of jet engines was getting louder now. “Crap. Okay. I’ll carry you, okay?"

They staggered across the vast sandy expanse, Roxas held tight against Axel's side and hopping awkwardly, rifle clattering against his back. He frowned when he noticed where Axel was steering them. “We should wait on the beach with the others. Those ships can’t be that far off, right?”

Axel groaned, eyes fixated on the dugouts. One more step, and another. “They could be hours away, Rox.”

“Maybe, but the line’s just gonna keep getting bigger. Fat lot of good being alive’ll be if we can’t even get on the damn boat.”

Axel shook his head, bile clawing up his gullet. “No deal. We camp out there, we eat bullets for breakfast.”

“We’ve gotta take our chances. You’d rather die a coward?” There was no fire in his voice, just genuine curiosity. Axel couldn’t blame him. Behind the safety of the academy’s walls he’d been a blazing beacon of have-at-them, gloriously bragging to his fellow cadets about how many Foes he was gonna eviscerate. It was a wonder an intelligent, serious guy like Roxas ever gave him the time of day. Axel, who’d joked about pulling fingernails and shattering kneecaps and probing someone’s ear canals with a red hot metal poker, stuff he'd seen in those R-rated movies he’d sneaked into. Axel, who was all talk and no action. Axel, who was a brash sixteen years old to Roxas’ twenty.

Roxas nodded at the shoreline. “There.”

It was probably another bad idea but Axel carried Roxas anyway, carried him as far as he could. When that became too hard, he dragged him backwards through the coral and driftwood and battle detritus, blood trailing behind them, lungs heaving like a dying creature was struggling to erupt from his chest cavity and make off with whatever small concept of survival Axel had ever nurtured. Finally, they collapsed where the sea was foaming against the foreign sand. The new dawn touched Roxas’ face, rendering him in shades of gold. Axel knew he should be looking for bombers but he couldn't turn from Roxas, eyes watering in the sunlight until it was like gazing at somebody from the other side of a mirror. Roxas, shining like a sunrise. Axel's heart ached with the sensation of falling away, like the world was ending in a way that had nothing at all to do with war. He scooted closer, rested his head on the blonde's shoulder and tried not to weep.

“Million dollar sunrise,” Roxas murmured, held breath and held hope, fingertips ghosting through Axel's hair.

Axel crossed his fingers and prayed.


End file.
